


To Find My Heart is Beating

by Myzic



Series: Whumptober 2020 [5]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Bad Time Bus for Juno Steel, Blood Loss, Hurt/Comfort, Not Beta Read, Other, Whump, Whumptober 2020, be aware of that, lots of physical pain desc. in this so just, we die like hyperion mayors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26955736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myzic/pseuds/Myzic
Summary: He put a foot over the ledge of the ship, preparing himself to step over, despite everything in his body screaming at him that he was an idiot with survival instincts worse than Mick Mercury’s— and stumbled.Juno screamed shrilly on the way down and felt the ragged cutting of his vocal cords tearing themselves to shreds under the volume of it.The way his chest sounded when it smacked the top of the Ruby 7 reminded him of how birds had hit the windows of houses when they’d had a brief stint on S’tul Tus. Juno wheezed, breath punched out of him with a sledgehammer.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: Whumptober 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956226
Comments: 19
Kudos: 142





	To Find My Heart is Beating

The outside landing of the ship Juno had burst out of was windy, whipping around his long coat and making his eyes blur as they watered within seconds of standing outside. He looked around nervously, wincing at the sounds of blaring alarms behind him and expecting to see the Ruby 7 parked, or really just hovering somewhere nearby he could climb into it. Slowly. 

Susano’o glowed below him, _far_ below him, full of smaller makeshift homes, where there wasn’t the occasional factory or run-down shop. Most of the richer residents lived in ships like this, maybe a little bigger, maybe with less of that evil-hideout thing this one had going on. 

He felt unsteady on his feet, and Juno internally swore all the best Solar curses he knew and threw in a couple of popular Outer Rim ones he’d learned from Sasha’s parents too. Buddy had sworn there wouldn’t be much in the way of his fear of heights, back when he’d specifically asked that question upon learning he’d be snooping on a ship hovering in the air. Like a regular building, except floating, hundreds of feet above the brown, rough-shod surface of Susano’o. Well, you know what? People on Susano’o had shit taste in architecture!

Hell, that was high. The buildings below him were little more than small brown cubes, the people like singular pixels on a computer screen, all of it flat below him, and even without his ability to judge the distance the way he used to, he knew hundreds of feet lay between him and the earth. Juno felt an involuntary swooping in his stomach and licked his lips to find his tongue was sandpaper dry. His heart was fine, it was completely fine, and if he kept saying that, maybe it would stop doing those fun shuddering contusions in his chest.

“Buddy!” He yelled to the wind, hoping his comms would catch his voice, “Where’s my ride! I thought you said Jet would be dropping by to pick me up.” He would be grateful for the lack of people shooting at him right now, except they were all on a high-stakes heist with Peter, whose cover had been blown, which meant they were all probably shooting at _him_ right now. Juno wanted to be there, but to do that he needed a ride off this nightmare of a ship.

“Right, so darling, when I said that, I kept a few things from you so you wouldn’t be as… apprehensive about them.” What the hell did that mean? Juno did not like the sound of that. He hated it in fact.

“What happened to not not telling me things!”

“I’m telling you now, darling, look to your right!” He looked, and in the distance, way higher than regulation altitude, was a green spec. A lime green one, followed by multiple black ones. “When the man who recognized Pete told the others, they caught on to our little distraction, so I’m afraid Jet got caught up in a chase.”

“What d’you want me to do about it!” Juno waved his arms around, realized no one could see him, and put them down, embarrassed.

“All I want you to do, darling, is get your timing right,” She wasn’t? There’s no way she wanted him to…? 

“Buddy, I have to tell you I hate where this is going!” Juno yelled. 

“Jet will open the sunroof for you, so you’ll have to get the aim right too. Don’t worry about hitting it too hard, Jet will slow down a bit, but the rest is up to you!”

“What?!?”

“I guess I’m really asking you to do two things. Timing and aim, Juno!” The lime green dot of the Ruby 7 was getting bigger and it’d be on him in the next minute. What choice did he have? 

This could go one of three possible ways. The first being he actually made the jump, which was the only real option and the most unlikely one, the second, a plummet to his death, terrifying, but ultimately quicker than the third which involved doing neither of those things and being shot to death by the approaching black cars behind Jet. What a roster.

Juno looked over the side of the ship, past the kilometres of space between him and the hard, hard ground. At that point he fixed his gaze on the Ruby 7, getting larger and more defined by the second, watched the gleam of its paint in the sun and the stupid little rocket booster things on the side. Juno couldn’t afford to miss it, but as he stared over the side of this stupid goddamn floating building, he couldn’t steady his hands or the persistent thumping of his heart.

Less than ten seconds now. This was the worst thing he had ever done, and he’d fucked up a lot in his life so that was saying something. He could see Jet in the front seat now, and Juno’s heart was in his throat.

He put a foot over the ledge of the ship, preparing himself to step over, despite everything in his body screaming at him that he was an idiot with survival instincts worse than _Mick Mercury_ ’ _s_ — and stumbled.

Juno screamed shrilly on the way down and felt the ragged cutting of his vocal cords tearing themselves to shreds under the volume of it.

The way his chest sounded when it smacked the top of the Ruby 7 reminded him of how birds had hit the windows of houses when they’d had a brief stint on S’tul Tus. Juno wheezed, breath punched out of him with a sledgehammer. His chest felt like tenderized proto-beef, but he didn’t have long to recover because the wind was whipping through his hair, and he shot his hands out, clutching the rim of the sunroof, which he had missed by a couple of feet. His arms burned, fingers crying out at him, his chest felt like it had been machine pressed into a hard block of cement, and Juno shrieked along with them. 

With a herculean effort, Juno forced his arms to move him closer, inch by inch to the actual sunroof, chest feeling like it was being pounded on by brass knuckles with each slight shift and slow scoot forward. When he’d gotten his shoulders over the sunroof, Juno toppled in, head first, in a blur of dizzying gravity. His chest was a mass of pain, and if he had metaphorical balls there, he would have assumed that they had been ruthlessly kicked at.

He laid in a heap, crumpled on the floor below the back seats, and didn’t move. Juno shut his eyes, stomach revolting as a wave of nausea made his head swim and vision spin. 

“Are you alright, Juno?” The big guy’s voice was deep and… emotional. About something, but he didn’t have the energy to suss out what it was and responded with a groan. 

“How long till we get there,” he gasped out. Tomorrow, he would have a bruise the size of the Solar sun on his chest, but today, Nureyev was fighting a fuck ton of guys, and sure, ten or so he could handle on his own maybe, but who knew how long until their reinforcements got there. They had to be the backup that got there first.

“Twenty minutes, but I believe you should sit this one out, Juno.” That seemed like a swell idea right about now, with his upper torso aching all the way down to his heart. If he sat on the sidelines now, though, and Nureyev got hurt— he knew himself well enough to admit he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

“How many of them are there?”

Jet hesitated before answering, “Over twenty, and we’re thinking they have allies on the way.” 

“Cool, so I’m going,” he croaked, taking deep breaths that burned like molten lava as they inflated his lungs.

“If you must.”

“—and I’m not gonna take a ‘no’ on this — Wait, what?” Juno had begun to push himself up from the floor with shivering arms, already forming some defense for why he could fight, but found himself on unsteady ground once more as Jet agreed. “Thought you were gonna go all, ‘this is for your own good,’ which wow, that does kinda make me feel bad, saying it out loud like that.”

“I have known you for more time than I have Rita and Peter, yet less than I have Buddy, but at this point in our relationship I believe I at least know you well enough to see that you will not be deterred from this course of action, no matter how it might negatively affect your health.” Now he actually did feel bad, like a teenager whining about how he wanted to go to the party, and it just wasn’t _fair_. 

The feeling was soon run over by the other, more physical one in his chest, which was still as sore as it had been after impact with the roof of the Ruby 7. Juno pressed a hand to his ribs lightly, and though they hurt in a ‘tried to take money from a rabbit’ kind of way, they didn’t hurt in a ‘my best friend pushed an extremely heavy shelf on me to save me’ sort of way, so they weren’t broken. He knew what that was like and this wasn’t it.

Juno slumped against the side window of the car, noting they had descended at some point to street level, and he closed his eyes at the sight of the blurred buildings and inertia pushing him against his chair. He breathed through the cramping pain in his upper torso and weakly put his palms on his thighs. It was better that he rested now so he could be ready to go when they got there. The dizziness seemed to have stuck around after his fall and the blurred features of the places they passed didn’t help at all, so he kept his eyes closed. The sharp edges of an encroaching headache were prickling in the corners of his mind and Juno focused on his breathing and the black of his eyelids to tune it out.

“Our tails are gone now,” Juno peeled open his eyelids and focused on the rearview mirror, which must have been fogged from the big guy’s breath because the reflection of Jet’s grey eyes wasn’t as clear as it could be. “They shouldn’t be able to follow us from here.”

“That’s good,” he said shortly and sat up a bit. He should be getting ready, he hadn’t been keeping track of time, but they had to be getting closer now. The developing bruise on his chest hurt fiercely as he sat up, but Juno set his jaw. It was nothing, nothing compared to weeks of torture, to growing up a Steel, the alive one at that.

He shouldn’t be thinking like that. 

It only led to dark places. Places where he wished he was buried under Martian soil instead of his eternally teenage brother, where he rationalized the idea that he _deserved_ to be hurt, that he’d _earned_ it because of his mistakes. Mistakes that always seemed to come down to existing in the first place.

No, he was hurt, and that wasn’t okay. Juno could feel hurt without saying he’d had it worse because maybe he did, but that didn’t mean it was alright. That it was deserved.

The correction in his spiraling thoughts took up his attention for a moment or two before he inhaled and when his chest expanded it was like it was full of caltrops. Juno hissed, sitting back in his chair again as the world around him shifted with his movement. He could see Jet opening his mouth to pose a question and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“I didn’t find the file thing,” he took smaller breaths, careful he didn’t disturb his torso, “y’know the stupid paper folder with the Book’s location.” The big guy seemed unimpressed at his statement. It couldn’t be a diversion if he hadn’t managed to say something first though, so whatever.

Jet let it go with what looked like a reluctant frown, “At this point, I’m not surprised. This mission seems to have been ‘dead in the water’ so to say from the start.”

“I don’t think they actually had it in the first place,” There had been some crappy intel from one of Buddy’s contacts on that end, though he couldn’t imagine ever knowingly handing over faulty info to _Buddy goddamn Aurinko_. “Checked everywhere, pulled apart the place trying to find it, and came up with nothing. Zilch.”

“That is a shame,”

“Uh, yeah, sorry about that.” It definitely wasn’t there and had likely never been there at all, but Juno found himself regretting his inability to find it anyway. 

It was frustrating; Buddy’s plan to get everyone free healthcare had seemed like a crapshoot the first time he’d heard it, but now, almost a year later, it felt like they were getting closer every day. The unattainable had come within reach, and he wanted to reach out and grab it so bad that a failure like today made him grind his teeth into nubs in the face of it.

Jet’s tone was almost reprimanding, and Juno tried to remember he was having a conversation with more than himself, “If they did not have it, it was not your fault, Juno, so you don’t need to apologize.”

“Well… thanks? 

“I do not need to be thanked for stating fact, the same way you don’t need to apologize for something that was not your fault.” Oh. That was right, beating himself up about things that were beyond his control was bad for his mental health. It was such an easy path for him to slip down, plotted by years of rationalizations and logic that always seemed to make sense at the time.

“Yeah, that’s a good point. I’ll keep it in mind, but um, thanks anyway, big guy.”

“Indeed,” Jet said, and Juno wasn’t sure what he meant by the vague response but ignored it in favour of the pandemonium they’d pulled up to.

The car came to a stop, not twenty feet or so from Juno’s view of a mass of people around Nureyev who had his knives out, long and flashing, moving from person to person with the grace of a dancer, Vespa, quick on her feet and moving between bodies in seconds. Buddy was there too, blaster firing rapidly into the people surrounding the three of them, and if he had to guess, he’d say their reinforcements had arrived first. There were maybe thirty or so people still fighting, and most of the ones on the ground seemed unconscious, which was good. At least Buddy was keeping up that part of their deal. She must have arrived with Vespa to back up Peter, and Juno wondered how far away the Carte Blanche was parked.

The plan had gone to hell in a handbasket, but this, at least he knew how to do. Juno grinned and reached for the door handle, fumbling at the smooth interior for a second before pulling it open. As he rose from the car Juno almost tripped out, forgetting for a moment that he’d had his ankles crossed inside and that he should uncross them before stepping out.

Jet was charging in, one hulking mass of muscle and fists, and Juno savoured the look on the gang member’s faces as they saw him run at them like a raging bull. He took a little longer to get there himself, but Juno unholstered his blaster and started carving his way to Nureyev who was closer to the edge of the fight than he would’ve expected. It felt good, aside from the constant unceasing pain in his upper body. This close, all of his shots hit and for a few moments, he was Juno Steel, best sharpshooter on Mars, the private eye that could turn off a light switch from thirty paces away. He’d forgotten the satisfaction of nailing someone, seeing them crumple to the ground because he’d stopped them, because Juno had gotten them before they could get to him.

“Hello, darling,” Juno could feel the weight of Nureyev at his back and smiled at the long knives lashing out at their attackers, “I must say I do always enjoy a fight more with you at my side.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” he raised his voice as he fired brilliant plasma into a woman on his left, a little beyond the reach of Nureyev’s knives, “you’re the one whose at my side.”

“I’m delighted, what an honour,” despite the cajoling words, Peter did actually sound delighted, lit up at Juno’s statement, and he felt a burst of warmth at the reaction. “Fighting along such a beautiful lady, what did I do for the universe to give me such a blessing?”

“Must’ve been something great in another lifetime, Ransom.”

Juno went to fire at a man on his right but found the tip of his gun faltering, unsure of where to aim. He fired and it didn’t make contact, which should’ve been near impossible with how close he was. 

The blow connected hard, then, his chest was blazing, pain erupting in pulses that elicited a wounded yell from his throat. It was pulsating from below his collar bones, trembling over the rest of his body. Juno registered the feeling of dust against his face and Peter above him, one foot planted to the right side of his head, while he stood over his body defensively.

“Juno!” He panted on the ground, screwing his eyes shut to force out the burning sensation. Juno laid there for a second longer, noting the unconscious body of the man who’d punched him to his left. “Are you alright?”

He forced himself to his feet. You know what? This fight was over, he could see Vespa cutting down everyone unfortunate enough to cross her path, Buddy, a brand of fire and plasma, and Jet tearing through people like they were rag dolls. He wasn’t needed on this one.

Peter gave him his hand, steady and smooth, beautiful. His eyes were brighter than the sun beating above their heads, and Juno tried to grin to stymy his worry, but the concern didn’t leave his face.

“I think I’m just going to sit the rest of this one out,” Juno pulled himself away loathfully, stumbling back in the direction of the Ruby 7, not too far from where they stood. “I don’t think you guys need me for the rest of it. Unless, you don’t think you can handle yourself, Ransom?”

Peter stared at him with distress and Juno wished he would stop being the one to put it there. He was captivating as he walked forward, placing his hand softly on the back of his neck, while his knife struck out behind Juno, a silver sheen slicing past him. That was hot.

“Of course, do you— would you like me to help you there?”

There was a refusal on the tip of his tongue as he began to walk away, but the world blurred once more and Juno nearly tripped into a woman with a very large blaster. Then, she was on the floor and Peter was standing protectively at his side, the blaster still wobbling as it balanced itself on the ground. Juno re-evaluated.

“Let me rephrase my question. Juno, please let me help you there.” He found slim arms wrapping themselves around his shoulders, helping him walk in a straight line, “There is only one answer I’m willing to accept right now, I think I should let you know in the spirit of fairness.”

Juno muffled his chuckles when they speared him through on the way up, “I’ll take you up on that offer, Ransom.” 

He sat down hard against the side of the car, back on the cool paint, and once again focusing on his breathing. Peter planted himself down next to Juno in the most graceful flop he’d ever seen. Juno knew that something was wrong with him now because as he looked at Peter’s face, the same one he’d spent hours memorizing, engraving every mole, each fleck of hazel in his eyes to memory, he couldn’t make out either of those things. 

“I took a bit of a fall, think it might have fucked me up a bit earlier,” he gestured to his upper torso vaguely, unwilling to touch the oversensitive area, “you’re not gonna want to look at me for the next few weeks, Babe, gonna have a hell of a bruise here. Feels like it’s going to be a big one too.” He felt a little discouraged at the idea and carefully placed an arm around Peter whom Juno leaned against with most of his weight.

Peter straightened for a second, but his words flattened Juno’s disappointment too quickly for it to really set in, “You’re not joking, are you?”

“What? No yeah, it’s gonna be an ugly one, I can feel it?” he finished uncertainly, uncomfortable with the alarmed expression on Peter’s face. His hands found their way under Juno’s shirt and he forced himself still, wanting to bat them off. It was fine, Peter was never more precise, more caring than when he was touching Juno.

“That’s not just a bruise, Juno.” His shirt came up to reveal a big splotch of dark purple, like a tattoo, fragmented in spots of dark colour all across his chest. “That’s— you’re _bleeding_ , Juno, how long has it been like this? Vespa! Juno’s injured!”

He called out suddenly and Juno would jolt at the sudden raising of his voice but his head swam as it was and he didn’t move past a small twitch of his arm.

“We’re all injured, how bad is it?!” Her voice growled out across the mob of people which is mostly just an indistinct blob of black outlines at this point. That was bad. 

“He’s bleeding!” Nureyev’s voice was fearful, and wow he was kind of an asshole for worrying his boyfriend so much, wasn’t he? It probably shouldn’t be his only motivation for not getting hurt, but Juno swore by the guilt anyway.

A more furious response, “How much, Ransom? Where?!”

“On the inside!” A series of angered and creative curses filled the air, loud even from this far away. Juno felt hands running through his hair now, fast and rhythmic, and it was familiar, if more desperate than he was used to.

“S’where it’s sposed to be,” he mumbled, turning his head into Peter’s neck so he doesn’t have to look at the migraine-inducing blurry bobs that filled his vision. Juno inhaled and focused on the scent of his cologne which had stayed mostly intact through the day, and the feeling of his hair tickling his cheeks instead of the insistent pounding that made his blood beat thick through his veins.

It’d been a week since he’d seen Nureyev, since he’d gone undercover, slipping on a new name like a pair of favourite shoes, gone with a goodbye and a kiss Juno had clung to for a little longer than he should have given their time restraints. Wait, he could kiss Nureyev now if he wanted. He pressed his lips to Peter’s neck, not bothering to move more than an inch for a kiss on his face.

Juno was pulled away from his kiss in the next few seconds, and he seized up, his entire body tensing in pain as he was guided to his feet. Making an escape, right. 

“Thank you, darling, but I think you and I would both enjoy a kiss a little more when you’re not in pain or bleeding out on the inside.” Juno took a spot on the far right side of the car and instead of Peter sitting down in the middle seat next to him, it was Vespa who slid in, blurred, and hands covered in blood.

“Don’t frown at me like that, Steel, you need a medic, not your damn boyfriend right now,” She lifted his shirt without an ounce of hesitation and this time Juno almost did whack her hands away. 

He felt bloated, sloshy almost, like the empty spaces between his organs were filling up with blood and they were sliding against each other, vicous and slimy in his chest. Juno had to refocus on his breaths instead of the jabbing in his temples, stopped being able to hear Vespa and the others, and zeroed in on how his lungs expanded with each slight breath. 

There was yelling, he could hear the timber of Peter’s voice in the word ‘faster,’ and Vespa backing him up for once in her life, the feeling of the Ruby 7 gaining speed the same way the Carte Blanche did, slowly before it accelerated in bursts with quick whistles and high pitched beeps that did nothing to stop the ringing in his head.

He was weightless soon after they stopped, slender arms under his back and knees, and Juno wrapped his arms around Peter’s neck limply, unable to do more than lightly intertwine his fingers so they didn’t flop back down to his sides. 

There were needles pushed through his arm in the next moment, different bags of yellow liquids, clear, red. He looked away from the red one as it seeped through a tube slowly into his arms.

“This is an anesthetic, Steel, your chest is going to feel numb in the next few minutes. Don’t forget to breathe when you can’t feel it, but don’t take breaths too big.” Juno memorized her words, pushing past the physical feeling of air flowing in and out of his nose to pay attention. “Ransom, I need you out of here, I have to relieve the pressure in Juno’s chest and I can’t have you mucking around in my sterile environment.” For a second Nureyev, blurry, yet still stunning as an undefined figure, hesitated, but left. 

“You might wanna close your eyes for this, Steel.” He did. Juno thought of other things while Vespa started to take out her scalpel. He thought of his migraine, focused on the pain to ground him, distract him. Then, he thought of what he would do to welcome Peter back from his week-long cover, how they could celebrate. It was a good thought.

Didn’t make the surgery he was fully aware of any less awful. Juno almost wished he’d been put under for it. He didn’t open his eyes once.

It still sucked.

~

Vespa had put some cold, invasive thing on his stomach that was apparently supposed to help stimulate clotting and do a thing to his blood vessels? His chest had returned to its regular tone for the most part, which meant he was mostly fine by now. Juno had been given a strict warning to not stress himself, and not drink goddammit, which he planned on listening to for at least the next month.

Buddy had been by with a solemn, heartfelt apology about the manner of his escape, which he’d waved aside, feeling a little awkward. It wasn’t like there had been any other options, and hey, now he had even more reasonable caution about long drops, which was good for his survival instincts and continued existence.

Around the corner of the med bay, Juno saw Nureyev, about to round the entrance of the med bay and he wanted to get up to greet him, pull him into an embrace and give him an actual kiss. But there was no rush, he didn’t need to. Peter was going to get here in a few short seconds for him to do exactly that anyway, so Juno stayed sitting.

Except, it wasn’t Peter who made it to his bed first. Rita bounded around the corner and was hugging his legs before he could follow her with his eyes across the room. Juno took a second to be grateful someone told her about his chest and that it was his hips she was hugging.

Her hair was in a bit of disarray, her usual two pom pom ponytails frizzy and let out of their twin scrunchies to fall knotted around her head, “Mistah Steel, you’re okay! I knew you would be, of course, ‘cause Miss Vespa’s great at what she does, but I was real worried anyway, and _you can’t be doin’ this again boss_.” She looked less put together than usual and Juno remembered she’d been biting her nails for most of the week, usual role as hacker put on the back burner as the file had supposedly been paper.

“I’ll try not to, Rita, I’m sorry I make you worry so much.” he patted her back for a second and pretended the tightness in his chest was from his surgery.

“No, I choose to worry about you,” Her eyes shone with fierceness, “‘cause I care about you, Mistah Steel, and I know you don’t mean to get hurt like this, but I’m going to worry about you anyway and so will Mistah Ransom!” Honestly, how did he manage to get Rita in his life? Right, because she decided she wanted to keep him. 

The side of his bed creased under Nureyev’s weight as he sat down, and Juno reached for his hand to find it already open and waiting for his, “I agree with Rita on this, Juno. I love spending time with you, dear, but I do wish we spent less of it in here.”

“Hey, ditto, The med bay isn’t exactly my favourite spot on the ship.” Juno hooked his two arms around Nureyev’s neck and pulled him down for a kiss before he could respond, “That would have to be my room, with you,” he whispered into Peter’s ear and let him straighten up, grinning at the way the tips of his ears had reddened, blush blooming, petal-soft on his cheeks.

A whistling noise exuded from around his legs, and he could feel Rita vibrating in place. Juno looked to see her two hands pressed against her cheeks and could feel his own blush rushing through his face. 

“You two are so cute!” Rita squealed, and Juno held Peter’s hand as she did and didn’t let go.

**Author's Note:**

> Jet is the mom friend. No, I will not be taking criticism at this time.  
> I’m pretty sure I’ve made those two losers hold hands in every fic they’re together so far. No regrets.
> 
> If you want to come and scream at me, I’m @themagicmistress on Tumblr!


End file.
